President Barack Obama is way off base in his criticism of GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s Medicare proposal, according to a
Wall Street Journal editorial.
Obama states constantly that House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan's plan would make seniors pay $6,400 more for healthcare a year. “But merely because he keeps repeating this doesn't mean it's in the same area code of accurate,” The Journal’s editorial board writes.
Obama’s accusation is based on an out-of-date Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate of the gap between the cost of healthcare a decade from now, in 2022, and the size of the House budget's premium-support subsidy for a typical 65-year-old in 2022.
“In other words, the $6,400 has no relevance for any senior today. None,” the editorial states. “But it also is unlikely to have any relevance for any senior ever because CBO concedes that its number is highly uncertain and ‘will depend on the evolution of the health care and health insurance systems over time, which is hard to predict.’ That's for sure.”
In any case, the dated CBO analysis doesn’t even apply to the current Romney-Ryan plan on Medicare. Ryan has changed his plan substantially over the past year as part an effort to draw Democrats on board.
“In its most up-to-date analysis, CBO admits that it ‘does not have the capability at this time to estimate such effects’ in the new version,” according to The Journal. So it certainly can’t back up the $6,400 estimate now.
“The truth is that the Ryan-Romney reform isn't anywhere close to Mr. Obama's cartoon version,” The Journal editors write.
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